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MODULE 1
IDEAS
Where do good ideas come from?
Anywhere is the short answer to that. You are a sentient being with imagination so be prepared for anything to pop into your head from anywhere.
Where do good ideas come from? From big imaginations. You can train your imagination to be big and muscular just as you would train your body. Try to look at ordinary things in an extraordinary way. Beware the obvious. Obvious may be goof when you come to fill in factual details but it is not interesting from a writer's point of view or from the audience's point of view for that matter.
The only way to test your ideas is to see how much you can actually write about them, how far their wee legs carry them. Example. You are on a bus and three seats ahead of you is a young man in say his mid twenties and a little boy aged around nine or ten. They are not unusual in either the way they look or the way they behave. The nonwriter may note them but will think no more about them. You on the other hand create a story about them. First scenario. The young man is the child's elder brother. Perhaps he is a soldier home on leave and taking his young brother to a sporting event or some sort of entertainment. Test that. What's going to happen next? Do they have a good day or does something terrible happen to them? If they have a good day then you are limiting the idea to the relationship between the two and whilst that could be very interesting in a short story or even a novel it's hardly going to hold the attention of an audience who've paid good money to come and be entertained. So run it with something terrible happening. The young boy gets lost or abducted. You now have a better idea because more ideas will spring from that. Scenario 2. The child is actually the young man's son the result of a teenage one night stand and they have just found one another. Just think of what you could do with that. Scenario 3(Dark and disturbing) The little boy is being abducted by the young man. Perhaps they have 'met' in an internet chat room or he has seen the boy going into school. Maybe the young man works at or near the school. Whatever the reason for their meeting and for them being together with out any obvious stress, something dreadful is going to happen to this child.
Write as much as you can about the following.
1) A well dressed man, sitting alone in an expensive restaurant.
2) "I'm going to kill that bitch if I ever get my hands on her!" Overheard remark in a department store, one woman to another.
3) A man dies, suddenly.
4) An elderly person wins the lottery.
5) A child finds a stray dog.
Food for thought? Bon apetite
Mini mental push ups or from Aardvark to Zymurgy
Take your dictionary (If you don't have one shame on you, go and buy one) Open it at any page and try to write something, anything about the first word that catches your eye. If you get a really screwy word like zygote or galloon you are permitted to select another word.
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Write it down! Always keep an ideas book handy and get into the habit of writing things down as they come to you, even if it's only a few words that you later rely on in your work. |
